Loop's demise was Sioux Falls' gain

Shutdown of cruising 10 years ago contributed to downtown

Aug. 18, 2013

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Nick Hanna, 19, of Sioux Falls and Cheryl Walker, 18, of Sioux Falls sit on the hood of Hanna's Jeep and watch a steady stream of cars cruise the loop at 11th and Main in June 1999. / Argus Leader file photo

Seeing and being seen was an important part of cruising The Loop. / Argus Leader file photo

Closing the Loop

2000: City passes an anti-loitering ordinance, making it illegal for groups of 10 or more to block foot traffic. 2003: Anti-cruising ordinance makes it illegal for drivers to pass the same point more than twice in a two-hour period between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Where was the Loop?

The circuit consisted of two major one-way streets, 10th and 11th. Cars made the turnaround at Menlo Avenue on the west side and Second Avenue on the east.

Andy Howes, a former city councilman who was part of the committee that worked to shut down The Loop, says that act has helped downtown flourish. / Joe Ahlquist / Argus Leader

Darrin Smith

Doug Barthel

It’s been a decade since the city effectively stopped downtown cruising — a Sioux Falls tradition on summer nights.

Because business owners demanded action from elected officials and law enforcement over congregating teens, vandalism and a sense that downtown wasn’t safe.

Because those young people packed City Council meetings, reminding people that being young doesn’t mean you’re dangerous, and that it’s their city, too.

Today, the only people lingering downtown are sitting at local restaurants or admiring outdoor artworks.

“The single most important thing that made downtown what it is today — there’s absolutely no question — it’s the banning of The Loop,” said Darrin Smith, community development director for the city of Sioux Falls. He was on the City Council at the time and was part of a committee that pushed for the end of the cruising strip.

The Loop was a 12-block route on 10th and 11th streets between Second and Menlo avenues. Many nights, bumper-to-bumper vehicles maneuvered the route, their occupants stopping occasionally to congregate in downtown parking lots before moving once again.

Smith describes a downtown overrun with teens and young adults who gathered in parking lots, smoking, drinking and playing music. Especially on summer weekends, crowds grew to a hundred or more people, he estimates.

It wasn’t just teens, Smith said. People in their 20s and 30s would stay long after the 11 p.m. curfew.

“We had a downtown that people were afraid to come down to at night,” he said.

Changing downtown

When Grant Houwman moved his insurance business to 10th Street and Phillips Avenue in 1999, people thought he was making a mistake, calling the area “a cesspool,” he said. He thought investing in downtown was worthwhile in a growing city.

But there were issues — more than once vandals tore down his sign and broke store windows. People urinated in the doorway.

Business owners blamed the Loopers and, over time, closing The Loop became a necessary goal. It also proved a difficult one.

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“It allowed business to flourish,” Houwman said. And in the years that folowed, projects such as Phillips to the Falls and the SculptureWalk helped change downtown Sioux Falls.

In 2003, then-Mayor Dave Munson wanted to see downtown Sioux Falls reinvent itself, and he said The Loop made it difficult for business owners to make a living.

“I wasn’t going to let a bunch of kids — and adults even — ruin people’s businesses,” he said. “I just think you had to take them on and challenge them that this wasn’t going to go on.”

He spent evenings talking with kids on The Loop about why they were there in hopes of encouraging them to move on.

Loitering, vandalism and littering weren’t serious crimes, but it was a lot of work to turn things around, Police Chief Doug Barthel said. He had just been appointed when The Loop discussions began.

“There were a lot of man hours that were put into it on our end,” he said. “The anti-cruising ordinance was the final nail in the coffin.”

It wasn’t an overnight change, he said. For a couple summers in a row leading up to The Loop closure, he focused his force on the downtown core. Officers went out on foot and bikes. Unmarked police cars cruised alongside those who rode The Loop.

Crediting police for their vigilance

The City Council passed an ordinance against loitering in 2000, making it illegal for more than 10 people to gather without a permit and block pedestrian traffic.

The anti-cruising ordinance came three years later. It was the result of several contentious public hearings that packed the city’s town hall. Once the law took effect in summer 2003, it became illegal to drive past a certain point more than twice within a two-hour period in the late-night hours. A violation came with a $75 fine.

“You’ve got to give credit to the police department. Ordinances and policies are only half the equation,” Smith said. “The police had an immediate presence downtown. I think that message spoke volumes.”

It took writing a few tickets for people to get the message, but the number of offenses quickly dwindled. Before the ordinance went into effect, officers wrote about 850 tickets or warnings a month. Fewer than half the tickets were issued after the ordinance was in place. A year later, officers issued 26 tickets in the same period.

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Barthel said it took an ordinance with some teeth to convince people The Loop was over. Looping had been a way of life for a generation of kids, but after three or four years, he said, activity on The Loop really turned a corner. To high school kids today, The Loop doesn’t mean much of anything, he said.

A new street configuration on The Loop also helped deter repeat traffic. In 2006, the city and the South Dakota Department of Transportation redesigned the S curve that shoots traffic from the 10th Street one-way, onto 12th Street. The project wasn’t in response to the loopers, but rather to improve safety. But the changes permanently altered The Loop.

Before that, drivers often would sideswipe each other as they negotiated the curve and tried to decide whether they wanted to head west on 12th or turn back east on 11th.

Sioux Falls 'needed to put its foot down'

Looking back, Smith said, the ordinances to curb loitering and cruising were pretty silly. Andy Howes agrees. He served with Smith on the City council committee that worked on the ordinances.

To enforce the cruising law, a pair of officers would wait along The Loop. One would read license plate numbers as cars drove by, and the other would log them on a laptop computer. If a plate popped up more than twice in the two-hour period, the crew would radio to another officer to pull over the offender.

“I think it shows how ridiculous the thing was,” Howes said.

“The community just needed to put its foot down and protect both the private and public investment downtown.”

Romanticizing days of 'American Griffiti'

Howes remembers driving The Loop was the thing to do when he was in high school 20 years ago. But it had been a destination for previous generations.

In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, though, it was just looping, he said. The street element grew more and more troublesome in the ’80s and ’90s.

“It wasn’t 25-cent hamburgers and shoestrings anymore,” Smith said, adding that drugs and alcohol became a part of the gatherings. “There’s just nothing good associated with what was going on with The Loop at that point.”

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Kids were vocal in their opposition of the ordinance as the City Council debated the options. Some of the older generation spoke out against it as well.

“They had a real romantic notion of what it was in a different era,” Howes said.

Others thought the ordinances were too strict. The city already had a curfew and ordinances for loitering and littering. Business owners outside of downtown expressed concerns that the problems would just move to another area of the city.

Barthel said that for the most part, that didn’thappen.

Just after The Loop closed, some kids hung out in parking lots of stores such as Walmart and Best Buy. Cruising moved, for a time, to the south side of town near 69th Street, Western Avenue and Louise Avenue.

Today, Barthel said, officers see some cruising on 41st Street and kids gathered at 41st and Minnesota Avenue. But he said it was nowhere near the problem caused by so many people in a concentrated dowtown area.

“They really didn’t go somewhere else,” said Tim Kant, who opened Stogeez Cigar Lounge on Phillips Avenue not long after The Loop was closed. “I think it was a deal where they had to go find something else to do.”

About the same time, Kant began petitioning the city to allow outdoor seating using the downtown sidewalks. That’s an attraction that draws people to downtown businesses today.

“It all kind of went hand in hand where (we said), ‘Let’s see what can we do to make the downtown a little bit better,’ ” he said.

“What was done with The Loop was the absolute linchpin for what we’ve seen happen in the last decade,” Howes said.